Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: net.philobotomy Message-ID: <243@spar.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-May-85 05:52:13 EDT Article-I.D.: spar.243 Posted: Tue May 14 05:52:13 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 07:25:47 EDT References: <2112@decwrl.UUCP> Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 138 >Hindu religion is based on the concept that the universe is one huge >pulsating brain... They refute any basis for the universe being >continuous, and instead of acknowledging that there are some truths >that are inaccessible, they prefer to fill in the blanks with >mumbo-jumbo. If there is a superior being, it most likely isn't the one >they describe. >... >If you are here to introduce us to christianity, believe me, most of us >have seen it many times before. What I doubt is that you have ever >consciously seen any of *this* before. You see, the " bitter " >conflict is a result of isolation, a lack of communication, and I grow >tired of listening to you. Perhaps you should try listening to us for a >while. > >-- John Williams John, I fail to see how Hindu thought is at variance with the religion you apparently espouse -- `continuity'. A deeper analysis than you have provided should prove illuminating. Please explain your flamage. Furthermore, Bill Gates' essay on Fundamentalist Christian vs. scientific modes of thought seems hardly less dogmatic and irrational than your rebuttal. You seem to use `continuity' as your ultimate criterion for validity. In this, you appear to be at variance with the vast majority of modern scientific opinion. Compared with the most reasonable modern Christian and Hindu philosophies, which have at least taken care to disentangle themselves from controversy with modern science by remaining within the realm of subjective experience, your utterances would appear to lack either scientific or metaphysical validity. BTW, materialists may be frustrated by the presence of any sort of metaphysics in net.philosophy. Such cynics should be reminded that: 1. Metaphysics IS a branch of philosophy, regardless of the antimetaphysical trend that has characterized modern thought since Hume. It is ironic that though empirical philosophy such as that of Carnap, Ayer, Dewey, &c., may label metaphysics as `bad poetry', physicists themselves often appear in the vanguard of the growing interest in Eastern mysticism and other `oh wow' tendencies that materialists so scorn. Why? 2. There has been an upsurge of Bad Metaphysics in this newsgroup. This is, I believe, a backlash due to the short-sighted materialism that has denied any validity whatsoever to Metaphysics. Can we have some balance, please? 3. Metaphysics and science can work in harmony. Many of the most profound ideas driving science in the past ~100 years were essentially metaphysical in nature -- eg. Mach's principle that `entities do not twice express themselves' as the force behind General Relativity, or Darwin's principle of Evolution. Such ideas have no predictive ability and are not subject to objective verification; nonetheless they have created a fertile environment for philosophical contemplation. In this spirit, one might hope to find much of value in both Hindu and Christian modes of thought. As to the universe being `one huge pulsating brain', there are phenomena in modern physics to which this description may be relevant -- one's subjective knowledge of objective phenomena does in fact seem to have influence on subsequent objective phenomena. Those possessing greater familiarity than I have with Hindu philosophy are encouraged to describe its most universally applicable concepts. On the other hand, though I found Bill Gates' recent essay `Penses' accurate as a description of how truth is perceived by certain members of the scientific and Christian communities, I believe that he has unfairly stereotyped both viewpoints by blindly omitting the center ground: >Science, by its very nature, refutes the existence of a God, or, at the >very least, limits His power to the provable and understandable. Examples: > > Man is ultimately responsible for his own fate. > vs. > God is ultimately responsible for everything's fate, including man's. > > Man evolved from other, lower life forms. > vs. > God created man, just as he created all other life forms. >...Scientific theories such as these (remember, they're just hypotheses) >directly oppose what we as Christians read to be true in the Word of God > - the Bible. Humankind and the physical universe itself can be viewed as but different descriptions of the entity you call `God'. When Rich Rosen says `everything is just interreacting chemicals', then one must assume he prefers to attribute qualities to chemicals that some of us typically associate with other levels of description. Whatever it is that Rosen calls `matter and energy' possesses to have evolved into the phenomena we see around us today, it must certainly have possessed the qualities you prefer to bundle together into the entity you call `God'. Science DOES NOT refute the existence of God, neither does it limit His power in any way. Science is simply an attempt to understand a part of the universe by restricting one's focus according to a carefully chosen discipline. You might say it has placed God outside its realm of study, or else beyond the horizon of its present capability. Christianity, like Science, has many myopic advocates who would claim they alone possess the One True Knowledge, that anything inconsistent or irrelevant to their worldview is either false or nonexistent. My opinion is that such folk are the unknowing `Allies of Satan', a scourge on this planet who are in league with the forces of Oppression. Such microencephalic misunderstanding will bear little besides the bitter fruit of Intolerance. >Thus, if we really believe, we have to stick by what's written in the Bible >over what Science has decided to be true, because man is the origin of >one, and God is the origin of the other. The conclusions of Science can just as easily be perceived as the revelations of God via the divine inspiration of Einstein, Schroedinger, Darwin, &c. Not all Christians see Science as contradictory to the Bible, only the Fundamentalists and Rabid Antihumanists. The Bible, like the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, or the Diamond Sutra can provide vast insight into human experience in a way that science must forever remain ineffective. Misapplying the wisdom of such texts to realms in which they were never intended is to pervert their purpose. Those who insist that Christians pluck out their own eyes and embrace the false witness of blasphemers whose interpretations of the Bible are at variance with God's most glorious creation -- the Universe itself -- have transformed their church into the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Khronos estai ouketi -michael